Page:H.M. The Patrioteer.djvu/331

Rh because he mentioned it aloud. An unfamiliar pride possessed him. He stood up and said confidingly: "You can leave it to me. First thing to-morrow morning I'll go there."

"You don't understand. It is all over."

Then his voice became benevolent. "We are not absolutely without weapons. Wait until I see him!"

He gave her his hand as they parted. She called him back again.

"Are you going to challenge him?" Her eyes were staring wide open and she held her hands to her lips.

"Why do you ask?" said Diederich, for he ceased to think of this.

"Swear that you will not challenge him!"

He promised. At the same time he blushed, for he would like to have known for whom she feared, for him or the other. He would not have liked it to be the other, but he stifled the question, because it might have been painful for her to answer, and he tiptoed out of the room.

He ordered the two women, who still waited below, sternly to bed. He lay down beside Guste only after she had fallen asleep. He had to think over what he would do the next day. Make an impression, of course! Admit of no possible doubt as to the outcome of the affair! But instead of his own smart figure, Diederich saw again and again in his imagination a stout man with pale troubled eyes, who begged, raged and finally collapsed: Herr Göppel, Agnes Göppel's father. Now in his terrified soul Diederich understood what the father must then have felt. "You don't understand," said Emma. He did understand what he himself had done.

"God forbid!" he said aloud, as he turned over. "I won't be drawn into this business. Emma was only bluffing with the chloroform. Women are depraved enough for that. I'll throw her out, as she deserves!" Then Agnes appeared before him in the rainy street and stared up at his window, the pale reflection of the gas light on her face. He pulled the bedclothes